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Sesquipedalian #3
the SESQUIPEDALIAN Volume VII, No. 3
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Loma Prieta quake (1989) October 17, 1996
DON'T MAKE ENGLISH OFFICIAL-- BAN IT INSTEAD
by Dennis Baron
Congress has passed legislation making English the official language
of the United States. Supporters of the measure say that English
forms the glue that keeps America together. They deplore the dollars
wasted translating English into other languages. And they fear a
horde of illegal aliens adamantly refusing to acquire the most
powerful language on earth.
On the other hand, opponents of official English remind us
that without legislation we have managed to get over ninety-seven
percent of the residents of this country to speak the national
language. No country with an official language law even comes
close. Opponents also point out that today's non-English-speaking
immigrants are picking up English faster than earlier generations of
immigrants did, so instead of official English, they favor "English
Plus," encouraging everyone to speak both English and another
language.
I would like to offer a modest proposal to resolve the
language impasse in Congress. Don't make English official, ban it
instead.
That may sound too radical, but proposals to ban English first
surfaced in the heady days after the American Revolution.
Anti-British sentiment was so strong in the new United States that a
few superpatriots wanted to get rid of English altogether. They
suggested replacing English with Hebrew, thought by many in the
eighteenth century to be the world's first language, the one spoken in
the garden of Eden. French was also considered, because it was
thought at the time, and especially by the French, to be the language
of pure reason. And of course there was Greek, the language of
Athens, the world's first democracy. It's not clear how serious any
of these proposals were, though Roger Sherman of Connecticut
supposedly remarked that it would be better to keep English for
ourselves and make the British speak Greek.
Even if the British are now our allies, there may be some
benefit to banning English today. A common language can often be the
cause of strife and misunderstanding. Look at Ireland and Northern
Ireland, the two Koreas, or the Union and the Confederacy. Banning
English would prevent that kind of divisiveness in America today.
Also, if we banned English, we wouldn't have to worry about
whose English to make official: the English of England or America? of
Chicago or New York? of Ross Perot or William F. Buckley?
We might as well ban English, too, because no one seems to
read it much lately, few can spell it, and fewer still can parse it.
Even English teachers have come to rely on computer spell checkers.
Another reason to ban English: it's hardly even English
anymore. English started its decline in 1066, with the unfortunate
incident at Hastings. Since then it has become a polyglot
conglomeration of French, Latin, Italian, Scandinavian, Arabic,
Sanskrit, Celtic, Yiddish and Chinese, with an occasional smiley face
thrown in.
More important, we should ban English because it has become a
world language. Remember what happened to all the other world
languages: Latin, Greek, Indo-European? One day they're on
everybody's tongue; the next day they're dead. Banning English now
would save us that inevitable disappointment.
Although we shouldn't ban English without designating a
replacement for it, there is no obvious candidate. The French blew
their chance when they sold Louisiana. It doesn't look like the
Russians are going to take over this country any time soon - they're
having enough trouble taking over Russia. German, the largest
minority language in the U. S. until recently, lost much of its
prestige after two world wars. Chinese is too hard to write,
especially if you're not Chinese. There's always Esperanto, a
language made up a hundred years ago that is supposed to bring about
world unity. We're still waiting for that. And if you took Spanish
in high school you can see that it's not easy to get large numbers of
people to speak another language fluently.
In the end, though, it doesn't matter what replacement
language we pick, just so long as we ban English instead of making it
official. Prohibiting English will do for the language what
Prohibition did for liquor. Those who already use it will continue to
do so, and those who don't will want to try out what has been
forbidden. This negative psychology works with children. It works
with speed limits. It even worked in the Garden of Eden.
_____________
Dennis Baron is professor of English and linguistics at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
-\-/-\ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \-/-\-
Salvador Pons's talk has been postponed until November 8th, so there
will be no colloquium this week. Please consult our web page
(accessible from the department's web page) for the updated schedule.
------------------
For directions and a complete list of colloquia, see
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/colloq/colloq.html
-/-\-/ SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM /-\-/-
"Heterogeneous Reasoning"
by Dave Barker-Plummer
on Thursday, 17 October
4:15 p.m., Bldg. 460:146 (Margaret Jacks Hall)
This week's forum will be presented by Dave Barker-Plummer. He is
currently a research scientist at CSLI, in the Hyperproof Project. He
will show a live demo of Hyperproof. Included below is an abstract for
his talk.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Heterogeneous Reasoning"
Dave Barker-Plummer
This talk will introduce and summarize the work that we have done as
part of an ongoing reseatch program aimed at the foundations of
heterogeneous reasoning. We use the term "heterogeneous reasoning" to
refer to deductive reasoning in which the information used in the
proof takes multiple forms. e.g., sentences, structured diagrams,
pictures, or other sorts of informative entities. During the past 100
years, logicians have made a great progress in the study of
homogeneous, linguistic reasoning - reasoning that begins, ends, and
never strays from the sentences of some language (typically the
sentences of formal language like the first-order predicate
calculus). But few, if any, of the mathematical tools developed to
study purely linguistic inference are directly applicable to the
heterogeneous case.
We have had three goals in this research. First, we wanted to
build a convincing case for the importance and legitimacy of reasoning
that makes essential use of nonlinguistically represented information
(diagramas, pictures, and so forth). Second, we have been developing
the requisite mathematical framework for assessing the validity or
invalidity of such reasoning. Finally, we have created a computer
program and companion textbook, called "Hyperproof", for use in
teaching a simple form of heterogeneous reasoning.
-\-/-\ XEROX PARC FORUM \-/-\-
Thursday, October 17, 1996, 4:00PM, PARC Auditorium
The origin, diversification, and dispersal of language
Johanna Nichols
University of California, Berkeley
Languages change over time, and the changes are sufficiently
numerous, rapid, and pervasive that after about 8000 years of cumulative
lexical and grammatical change there is little chance that any diagnostic
evidence of shared descent will survive in what are actually sister
languages. Hence the origin and ancient prehistory of languages cannot be
recovered by tracing the descent of today's languages. On the other hand,
the fact that firm evidence of common descent evaporates by about 8000
years, and the fact that the well-established and reconstructable
linguistic lineages are rarely more than about 6000 years old, makes it
possible to sample the structural and genetic diversity of the world's
languages at a controlled time depth, taking each of the roughly 300
traceable lineages to be an independent unit about 6000 years of age. For
the last several years I have been using such a sample to define the
distribution among the world's language families of what I call *historical
markers*: grammatical features which are (a) demonstrably slow-changing
and consistent in language families of great age (so we know that any
sharing of historical markers probably did not arise yesterday), (b) of low
frequency worldwide (so sharings between families are unusual and merit
attention), and (c) have statistically significant variation in frequency
from continent to continent or large area to large area (so we know these
variations are not due to universals or random chance but have real
historical meaning). Historical markers can identify large populations of
language families for which some long-standing shared geography and history
can then be inferred. The markers can be used to estimate an age for human
language and describe major trajectories of early expansion, routes and
chronology of the colonization of the Pacific and the New World, and
vectors of language spread in interior Eurasia and within the New World.
The overall picture is on the whole consistent with what is suggested by
research in molecular genetics, though the linguistic distributions
increase both the chronological and the geographical precision. The result
is a picture -- an abstract but fairly rich picture -- of language types
and language origins reaching back to the upper Paleolithic.
--------------
Johanna Nichols is Professor in the Slavic Languages Department at UC
Berkeley. Her research interests include the Slavic languages, the
linguistic prehistory of northern Eurasia, language typology,
linguistic prehistory, and languages of the Caucasus, chiefly Chechen
and Ingush.
----------------------------------
This Forum is OPEN to the public.
Host: Marshall Bern 415-812-4443
Web site: http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum
Requests for videotapes for "Xerox Employees Only" should be sent to Kim Edens (edens@parc.xerox.com).
Refreshments will be served from 3:45 - 4:00PM.
-\-/-\ FELLOWSHIPS/ASSISTANTSHIPS \-/-\-
-- Mabelle McLeod Lewis Dissertation Write Up Fellowships. Purpose:
To permit the grantee to work full-time to complete a scholarly
dissertation project upon which much work has already been
accomplished. Tenure: 1 year beginning on 10/1/97; grant awards vary
according to financial needs of applicants. Eligibility: *student
must be affiliated during the grant period with a Northern California
university *research is in the humanistic disciplines (history,
literature, philosophy, etc.) *grant will not be used for the purpose
of publishing a dissertation *preference given to applicants who have
not already held a similar type of award. Deadline: applications AND
recommendations must be received by DECEMBER 15, 1996.
For more information, contact:
Shirley Anne Shyne
Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund
Box 3730
Stanford, CA 94309-3730
415/494-1409
For an application, contact:
Jackie Vargo
Graduate Studies
Dean's Office, Humanities & Sciences
Building One
vargo@leland.stanford.edu
415/723-0564
-- UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: The Cognitive Neurosciences program at the
University of Arizona is seeking to fill a one to two year
post-doctoral fellowship position; startup time is negotiable, with
preference for Fall 1996. We are interested in applications from
persons with computational, experimental and neuropsychological
interests in human cognitive neuroscience in the areas of memory,
inference, and language. Application review is ongoing effective
October 12, 1996; applications accepted until the available positions
are filled. The University of Arizona is an AA/EEO employer; minority
and women candidates are encouraged to apply. Interested applicants
should send a letter and a vita with names of three references. Email
queries or statements of interest can be sent to garrett@u.arizona.ed;
materials sent by regular mail should go to M. Garrett, Director of
Cognitive Science, Psychology 312, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ,
85721.
-\-/-\ TRUE LINGUISTICS \-/-\-
Alert reader Anne Simone writes:
Colleagues--suppose it was inevitable. A searchable website,
WWW.SCHOOLSUCKS.COM, now exists for students to obtain pre-written
course papers. I thought at first that this was a hoax, but it's
not. The site is quite elaborate. Thanks to Jeanette Camron of
Creighton University's Division of Student Services for sending this
over:
------------------------------------------------
Dear Frat or Sorority:
Greetings from Miami, Florida!
www.SchoolSucks.Com
School Sucks is a new web site which will no doubt interest you.
It is the Internet collection of College Term Papers. All papers
are organized by topic (ie College of Arts and Sciences, etc.).
School Sucks is a FREE service, allowing college students (all of
whom have free Internet access across the globe) to DOWNLOAD THEIR
WORKLOAD.
School Sucks has been asked more than once, "How can we HELP School
Sucks grow? Start a campaign to encourage students to submit papers
they've written. IMAGINE MILLIONS OF STUDENTS WITH MILLIONS OF PAPERS.
What a library!
As School Sucks is new, we need submissions. They can be sent to
termpapers@schoolsucks.com. Students built the Internet and now
it's their turn to benefit from it.
School Sucks needs any links, attention or articles than you can
provide. It will ALWAYS remain free. It is sitting on a T1 line
(1,500k) and the owners will gladly hire students to work on it
when enough papers are submitted!
Next time you have a paper to write, it may have already been written.
At least you'll be able to use someone else's sources or see how OTHER
students attacked the problem!
School Sucks is run by Kenny Sahr. Kenny currently lives in Miami and
spent seven years in Israel (three in Israel Defense Forces) working
as a journalist. His Jordan Travel Guide was the first Hebrew language
travel guide about that nation.
Kenny can be reached at:
kenny@sahr.com
(305) 446-9229
-\-/-\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS \-/-\-
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-- UNDERGRADUATE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY-- POSITION AVAILABLE
IMMEDIATELY: Log and transcribe video data. We are looking for
several people to work with our research project to index the many
audio and video tapes we have collected, and to transcribe selected
portions. The videotapes are of students' learning during an
innovative classroom biology unit, fifth-graders researching different
endangered species. Requirements: Conscientious, detail-oriented
person who can use a Macintosh. High English proficiency. Skills or
knowledge relvant to education, biology, or audio-video equipment,
previous transcription experience, and familiarity with AAVE a plus.
$10/hr for 8 or more hours of work each week; time per week and
scheduling are flexible. Applicants should be able to commit to at
least 60 hours of work on this project. Work is available through
Fall and possibly Winter quarters. If interested, please contact
Cathy Lachapelle at 723-8461 (w) or 497-1445 (h) or by email at
aelin@leland.stanford.edu as soon as possible.
-- UBC: Opening for a two-year term as Assistant or Associate
Professor in the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences at the
University of British Columbia, available July 1, 1997. The School
offers graduate level education (MSc and PhD) for clinical or research
careers in speech-language pathology/audiology. Duties include
instruction in human language processing and neurolinguistics,
research, and university/school service. Requires a PhD and evidence
of scholarly excellence; preference will be given to applicants with
an interest in acquired language disorders. Salary and rank
commensurate with qualifications. The position is not in the tenure
track, but a tenure-track position will likely be advertised at the
end of the term. Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and
names (phone numbers and addresses) of three referees by January 15,
1997 to: Prof. Judith Johnston, School of Audiology & Speech Sciences,
UBC, 5804 Fairview Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z3.
UBC welcomes all qualified applicants, especially women, aboriginal
people, visible minorities and persons with disabilities.
(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)
-\-/-\ INSTA-PRIZE \-/-\-
-- THINK OF A NUMBER: A has thought of a number between 13 and 1300.
B is trying to guess it.
B asks whether the number is below 500.
A says yes.
B asks if the number is a perfect cube.
A says yes.
B asks if the number is a perfect square.
A says yes.
Then A says that only two of his previous answers are correct,
and that the number starts with 5, 7, or 9.
B now knows the number.
What is it?
-- Solution to MUCH GIGGLING: Mr Baker is the smith; Mr Brewer is the
draper; Mr Butcher is the carter; Mr Carter is the painter; Mr Draper
is the baker; Mr Ironmonger is the brewer; Mr Painter is the
ironmonger; Mr Saddler is the butcher; Mr Smith is the saddler.
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